A Brief Visit to the Malevolent Museum of Republicanism

Let’s take a brief tour of the Republican heart of darkness, that abscess on the human soul so persistently capable of the most shameless hypocrisies and callous cruelties. In order to visit this bleak landscape, we begin by dropping in on an exhibit featuring one of the most notable princes of darkness, a sinister saint of sanctimonious self-regard. I refer, of course, to Ronald Reagan, the Mullah of the Moolah manipulators and other 1 percenters, the regent of right wing yahooism, the top toady to the top cats.

Some older readers may recall how it was the infallible Ronnie who helped create the problem of widespread homelessness decades ago by emptying out the mental health care facilities in one of those ubiquitous schemes referred to as “conservative,” the cost-cutting measures that are always made at the expense of those who can least afford them, and that always wind up costing the nation loads more than they save. You know, like the mandatory drug testing of welfare recipients that costs tax payers a bundle, fattens the pockets of drug testing firms, and does nothing to either make life better for the poor, or to save a nickel of government pay outs to people who need help.

In the museum of Republican ideas, we’re going to see lots of tax break policies that benefit the rich, of course, so there’s almost never anything that can legitimately be called “conservative” about any of this stuff. The only thing being conserved is the right of some people to feel superior to their “inferiors, or yet another chance to “conserve” the prerogatives and privileges of the already amply privileged.